


echoes in the air; ripples on the water

by peterstank



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Found Families, Healing, Sad Peter Parker, Tony Stark Has A Heart, endgame spoilers, tony’s kids bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-18 01:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18975880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: Pepper stares and frowns. “What do you mean?”“I mean... I was just his intern, or whatever. I wasn’tevenhis intern, that was just a stupid cover we made up, and like, I annoyed him so much and stressed him out and honestly I’m not even sure why he bothered with me—I was useless, Idied—and I don’t even know where we are right now, and I have a...hada math test tomorrow. Five years ago.”He slows to a stop and breathes. “I died.”Pepper doesn’t speak for a long moment. Then she holds out her hand. Peter, after a short hesitation, takes it.“Peter,” she says, voice hard, stern. “Tonylovedyou.”{part of the journey is the end... but what comes after?}





	1. Chapter 1

 

It’s eight when she hears the cars pull up, gravel crackling under wheels, engines running idle, doors slamming. She looks up from the patient charts she’s filling out with a frown. That’s more than just the two people she’s been waiting on since noon.

 

May pulls off her glasses and rises, hurrying to the door. She throws it open, heart pounding, more sure than anything that _something is wrong._ After every tragedy she’s learned to pick up on the sixth sense of dread.

 

Pepper is the first person she sees, in soot-covered clothes with a hastily patched wound over her eye, blood dried and crimson on the side of her face.

 

“Pepper, what—?”

 

“May,” is all Pepper manages, reaching for her in an instant. She’s trembling.

 

“Pepper, oh my god, what happened?”

 

Pepper pulls back. “You haven’t been watching the news?”

 

Confused, May shakes her head. “No, I’ve been charting, I—”

 

“Okay,” Pepper says quickly, plastering a painful smile on her face with tears glistening in her eyes; she’s trying to be brave, to stay strong. “That’s okay, we’ll sort it out.”

 

 _Sort it out?_ May wants to ask, but that’s when she gets her first glimpse of the crowd that’s forming. There are many faces, ones she knows only because of their renown; Steve Rogers, Dr. Bruce Banner, Clint Barton—

 

(Captain America, the Hulk, Hawkeye. God, she can practically hear him rattling their names off in her head, bouncing on his heels in excitement, smiling like sunshine)

 

—and others, people she just knows. Happy, who doesn’t have a scratch on him but whose shoulders sag like the weight of the world has been laid upon them, and...

 

And...

 

“Peter?”

 

He’s standing behind Happy, wringing his hands, lip between his teeth, not dead. Five years she’d cried for him, missed him, cursed every god she’d ever heard of for taking him from her: the last piece of good she’d had left to her name.

 

He opens his mouth like he wants to speak but doesn’t get to, because she’s already thrown her arms around him. He’s solid, he’s real, her _baby_. “Oh my god,” she whispers, and that’s all.

 

Then Peter’s hugging her back. He holds her so tight, like he never wants to let go, like if he does he might fall over. Just like that, like a switch being flipped, like riding a bike because she just can’t forget, May is pulling back to look at him because _something is wrong._

 

There are tears on his cheeks and his eyes are rimmed with red like he’s already been crying. His hair is messy, coated in ash like the rest of him. His clothes are too big and his skin is covered in little nicks and scratches that heal slowly before her very eyes.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

She knows the answer will be a lie. Like Ben, he just wants to be strong for her. She asks anyway because if she doesn’t she’ll never forgive herself.

 

“I...”

 

His voice breaks. That’s not what she was expecting. Her blood rushes like ice in her veins. Something isn’t right, someone is missing—

 

“Tony?”

 

Just like that he flinches in her grasp. It’s Pepper who she was looking at, but May whips back to her nephew with the way he reacts. Peter’s chin wobbles and he looks down at his shoes, and May _knows_.

 

It’s the same way he looked when they were standing in the hospital, him and the two cops, Ben in critical condition two halls over. Peter, smaller and covered in blood, about to collapse because it was _all_ _too much and he was so sorry and Ben wasn’t gonna be okay and it was all his fault—_

 

“Shh, baby,” she says, before he can even get the words out. Peter sobs and lets her hold him some more, fingers carding through his matted hair while he cries and the cold settles into her heart.

 

Tony is dead.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Morgan?”

 

“She’s asleep,” May says. She and Peter are inside now, with the others. It’s them and Pepper and Happy crowded by the door while the others take free reign of the bathrooms and bedrooms. Pepper wonders if she’ll have a bed to sleep in tonight.

 

Then she wonders if she’ll even want to sleep in a bed that smells like Tony.

 

“Pep,” May says. Her eyes are hard, like steel. She might be the strongest woman Pepper has ever met. “Go sit down, okay? I’ll make you some tea.”

 

 _Here it comes,_ she thinks, even as she nods. Pepper remembers how it goes. It had been the same way after her dad had died; strangers wearing black, bowing their heads and apologising to her mother, offering to cook and clean and look after little Virginia.

 

 _That’s fine,_  Mom had said, smiling through the pain they share now, the chasmic tear that shatters the heart after losing half of it. _We’ll be just fine on our own, thank you._

 

Pepper wants all of these people to leave. Half of her craves a completely empty house where she can scream and cry and sob until she passes out, but the other half yearns for Morgan, for May’s steadiness, for Happy’s resilience, and for that strange kinship she’s found with Peter Parker in the last two hours, the agony coursing through their veins in unison as they clutched each other’s hands in the back of the blacked out SUV.

But Pepper sits down at the table. Waits in silence for the kettle to boil. Stares out the window and watches the leaves shift in the wind. Swears she can feel him standing over her shoulder, clutching a mug of coffee and muttering about how much his back hurts from chopping wood, _painkillers would be a life-saver right now, we got any, Pep—?_

 

( _you can’t take those with coffee, Tony_ )

 

“Pepper?”

 

It’s Rhodey. He had been there too, with her and Peter; the three of them had been the closest to Tony, the only ones to watch the life die in his eyes.

 

“Yeah?”

 

She assumes he wants something. Pepper doesn’t know why, maybe it’s just people always wanting things from her. Twelve years as a personal assistant does that to a person’s brain, rewires it to leave her always ready and expectant and a little exasperated.

 

His eyes soften and he pulls up a chair, reaching for her hand. “Pep, maybe you should sleep?”

 

“I’m...” Pepper’s throat closes up suddenly, the words are hard to get out. “I’m—tea.”

 

To make her point she gestures at May, who’s quietly shuffling around in the kitchen. He doesn’t know her, he’s only come around a few times since the snap to see Morgan. She’d missed him more than she realised. 

 

Rhodey nods. “You sure?”

 

“Yeah.” Pepper nods and convinces even herself. “I’ve been... it’ll help my throat.”

 

That seems to satisfy him. He’ll lay off as long as he knows she’s doing something to help herself feel better.

 

All Pepper wants to do is crumble into a thousand pieces, to turn to ash like so many others had. Maybe if she wakes up in five years—

 

“Mommy?”

 

 _Oh, god._ In five years Morgan will be ten. She’ll be ten and taller and she’ll talk fast like Tony, and she’s going to grow up without a father. She needs a mother, she _needs_ Pepper.

 

So she opens her arms and Morgan hurls herself into them, clutching a Spider-Man plushie to her chest. She knows something’s not right. There are too many people, strangers in armour who whisper about how awful all of this is.

“Where’s Daddy?”

 

Pepper shatters. She holds Morgan tight and chokes on her sob, eyes burning. “He’s resting now, baby,” she whispers, just for them. “He won’t... he’s not coming home.”

 

“Why not?”

 

Whiny, groggy from her nap, reaching up to rub the sleep from her eyes. She’s tousled and warm and sad already, frowning and rosy-cheeked and so, so small. He won’t get to watch her grow, he won’t get to watch her learn.

 

“He’s not... he’s gone, baby,” she manages, and has to make herself look Morgan in the eyes when she says it. The hardest thing she’s ever had to do. “But he loved you so much, okay? I promise.”

 

“Three thousand?”

 

She doesn’t understand, it hasn’t settled, she’s living in a child’s delirium and Pepper envies that more than anything. “Yeah, three-thousand.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been hours since they arrived, since he reunited with Aunt May. It’s hard for him to fathom, really, that what had only been a long and tiresome day for him had been five years for her.

 

It’s too much to think about and so he forces himself not to, forces all of it away and out of his mind. He helps May, sticks to her side like glue (or maybe it’s the other way around), doesn’t talk to anyone.

 

But it’s been five years, that’s undeniable. There’s a living reminder curled up on the couch in the sitting area, clutching a stuffed toy that looks suspiciously like him in his suit, cheek pressed against the palm of her hand.

 

Tony has a daughter.

 

 _Had_ a daughter. 

 

Peter looks away from her small form and focuses on the sandwich in front of him. It’s peanut butter. Happy made it for him. After a long battle he should be starving. His increased metabolism demands more nourishment than others require, but Peter has no appetite. 

 

He thinks, if he eats, it’ll just come back up.

 

“You gonna eat that, kid?”

 

His head whips around and he finds Pepper Potts, standing by the counter in a faded AC/DC shirt and sweats. They’re Tony’s clothes, he knows that without having to ask.

 

“I should,” he admits.

 

Pepper nods and sits down at the counter beside him. “That’s about where I’m at, too.”

 

Peter isn’t sure about the ease between them. It’s like they’re on the same wavelength, rolling through the motions at the same time, their grief is an ocean and they’re just managing to stay afloat in a rickety rowboat they’re piloting together.

 

Peter pushes the sandwich away, his heightened senses picking up on every single ingredient in the processed peanut butter and white bread. It smells awful.

“Mrs. Stark—”

 

“Pepper,” she corrects automatically, hands laced together on the quartz countertop, knuckles white. She’s not even looking at him, until she is. “It’s just Pepper, okay?”

 

Her eyes are blue. They remind him suddenly and startlingly of his mom’s; a vague memory floating to the surface of his mind, hazy around the edges: her laugh, eyes crinkled at the corners. 

 

“I’m not so sure I should be here.”

 

Pepper stares and frowns. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean... I was just his intern, or whatever. I wasn’t _even_ his intern, that was just a stupid cover we made up, and like, I annoyed him so much and stressed him out and honestly I’m not even sure why he bothered with me—I was useless, I _died_ —and I don’t even know where we are right now, and I have a... _had_ a math test tomorrow. Five years ago.”

 

He slows to a stop and _breathes_. “I died.”

Pepper doesn’t speak for a long moment. Then she holds out her hand. Peter, after a short hesitation, takes it.

 

“Peter,” she says, voice hard, stern. “Tony _loved_ you.”

 

That’s all, that’s it; the words are the little gust of wind he needs to fall over the edge. A tear lands on the back of her palm but she doesn’t react at all, other than to use her free hand to reach up and wipe his face dry.

 

“He missed you so much,” she goes on. “In the beginning, you were all he talked about. He was... he was devastated, Peter. He felt like he’d failed you, he hated himself for involving you in all of it... _god_ , he just wanted to get you back. All of it—it was all for you.”

 

Peter takes it all in silence, feeling warm and cold at once. “So he... died because of me.”

 

Pepper’s arm is around him and she pulls him close. “No, god, _no_ , Peter. _For_ you. For all of us, _everyone_. He was a hero. You are too, I can tell.”

 

Peter finally dares to look at her head on. “I just wish I could see him again.”

 

Pepper breaks and that makes him feel awful, and sad; it’s all unfair, it’s wrong, it’s so fucking stupid that they can’t... that they won’t...

 

“Me too.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! I’m so sorry this is 3,000 years late, life got in the way unfortunately. But here’s more a n g s t (with a sprinkle of fluff)

 

The fingers that card through his hair are gentle and warm. Peter does his best to stay absolutely still, keeping his eyes closed for as long as possible. He doesn’t want to wake up. 

 

Even though he didn’t sleep.

 

Even though, with his eyes closed he can see it: Tony slumped against broken concrete, veins painted black, staring unseeing at the remains of the enemy army in the distance, or at whatever comes after death. Peter doesn’t know.

( _We won, Mr. Stark... Tony..._ )

 

He can still feel it like he’s there, like the dust is still coating his skin, like he’s still breathing in ash.

 

That’s when his chest tightens and his hands curl into fists, and he can’t breathe, and Tony’s heartbeat pounds in his ears until it doesn’t, until it dies like the rest of him—

 

“Peter! Baby, _hey_ , look at me!”

 

May is in front of him. Her hands are around his wrists. Peter stops thrashing and gasps as reality settles in. Before she can even remind him to, he’s searching; five things he can see, four things he can smell.

 

The walls, white painted wooden panels with generic pictures in fancy frames. The window, half open, blinds pulled up to reveal the sprawling forest outside. Trees, birds, May.

 

 _May_ who smells like cinnamon and fresh linens and rose water. The bathroom, he can smell that too, lemon disinfectant, sharp and clear.

 

Peter relaxes in her arms. He’s not on a battlefield, he’s not on Titan, he’s here. In a house in the middle of the woods, an unfamiliar place built by familiar hands. Just like that it’s too much and he falls against her. May wraps her arms around him immediately, because that’s how this goes. They help each other through the horrors.

 

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

 

Peter can’t speak. There’s nothing to say anyway. If he were still five, he’d tell her he doesn’t want her to be sorry, he just wants his parents back. If he were thirteen, he’d tell her he’s sorry too.

 

But he’s just _tired_.

 

May rubs his back and cradles his neck and does all the things that normally make him feel so much better, only it’s not working this time. He tries to latch onto the memory of stability, of feeling fine and okay, but anything before yesterday is like watching someone else’s life.

 

It’s surreal, the realisation that a part of him knows he was dead. There was something in between his heart stopping and starting again, some plane where he existed.

 

Maybe it’s like in Star Trek, where when you’re beamed from one place to the other, your body is copied and re-created. Your old one is gone. Is this the body he’s always lived in? Does it matter?

 

“Peter? Do you wanna talk?”

 

“I...” he pulls back and wipes his nose, sees the pain all over her face, and realises he was dead. _Really_ dead. Gone for five years; she had to learn to live without him, learn to live alone. His heart breaks a little more. “I’m okay. Really. It’s just...”

 

“A lot?” She finishes, running her hands through his hair again. It feels nice. “Yeah, for me too.”

 

He wants to ask her a million questions. Did she move into a new apartment? Did she sell all his things? Or is it all still the same, is everything waiting for him back home, untouched beneath a layer of dust? Does she know if Ned or MJ survived the snap?

 

But the questions don’t come out. May starts talking anyway, because she always somehow knows exactly what he needs.

 

“It was really hard in the beginning,” she says softly, not really looking at him anymore. “I had never... I mean, you know how it was. I lived with my parents, and then my sister, and then Ben, and then... I’d never been all by myself before. It was too quiet, you know? I missed my chatterbox.”

 

She smiles at him. Peter tries to return it, but the attempt is pathetic. May’s pulse is through the roof; he can hear it, the vibrations, her wrist against his neck.

 

“I didn’t know what to do with myself. There were times when...” May shakes her head. “Tony would come around. God, I was so pissed at him, Peter. I blamed him for the longest time, and then... then we just talked. Realised we both felt guilty, and that we needed to rely on each other to get through. Really it was Pepper who did it. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten through it all without her.”

 

Peter’s skin is hot. There’s a hole where his stomach is supposed to be. He looks down, away from her, anywhere else. _My fault, my fault, I’m so stupid I’m so sorry—_

 

“You wanna know what she told me, to get me to keep going?”

 

Peter picks at a thread on the blanket. “Yeah, sure.”

 

Her hand tucks under his chin, lifts, and then they’re eye-to-eye. There’s only love there. He doesn’t know how she can manage that, doesn’t know how something so warm and good can exist in a world that’s so cold and unforgiving.

 

“She said you and Ben would have kicked me into next month if I just gave up. I had to keep going because I _owed_ it to you, and because there were other people who needed my help.”

 

His brow scrunches up. “What do you...?”

 

“Thousands and thousands of medical professionals were decimated after the snap, Peter,” she says, and shrugs. “I went back to school and got my doctorate.”

 

It takes a moment for her words to register, and when they do the first jolt of genuine _anything_ rips through the numbness. Peter throws his arms around her. “Oh my god, May, that’s awesome!”

 

May laughs. It’s a happy sound, one that pushes against the fog in his brain, a short burst of something like sunshine. “Really? God, I don’t know. I mean, I’ll be gone so much more now and with everything that’s happened—”

 

“No, no way,” Peter pulls back, smiling, cheeks hurting, “seriously, don’t even worry about it. I’m gonna be fine.”

 

May swallows. “All of your stuff is in storage at the old building. I’m living in this tiny studio with Mogli—”

 

“Mogli? Who’s Mogli?”

 

“My dog,” May explains. “He’s a total piece of work, you’ll love him.”

 

Peter falters. Just as he can’t quite fathom what it was like for her, he doubts she can understand the pain that rips through him now. 

 

“I’m allergic, May.”

 

Her face falls. “Oh. _Oh_.” Fluttering hands, a hasty smile, plastering something pretty and sweet over the mistake. “That’s okay, baby. We can... we’ll figure it out.”

 

Peter can’t look at her anymore, because what he sees... it doesn’t exist anymore; the home, the steadiness, everything bathed in gold, dust captured in a beam of sunlight that spreads across the linoleum floor, empty Thai food containers on the table that’s been in the family for generations, still covered in paint and marker stains from his childhood. 

 

Everything ends at some point. 

 

  

* * *

 

 

Breakfast is quiet. Too quiet. It’s like everyone is stuck in a fugue state, eyes glazed over, mechanically working their plates clean. It’s the silence that chokes Pepper, because all she can think of is Tony in a floral apron, badly singing Italian songs while she tried to get Morgan to stop hoarding her food in her cheeks and _chew_ , Spongebob reruns on in the background, a warm buttery smell from the bread Tony was trying to bake, working through his fifth altered recipe—

 

( _it has to be just right, Pep, otherwise why bother?_ )

 

Morgan chews her food now. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t even hum.

It’s only them; her and Happy and May. The rest are either shacked up in the guest house a few acres north or gone. _We’ll be back for the funeral,_ Clint had said. _I just... I need some time with my kids. After Nat. You understand._

 

Pepper does. _God_ , does she. Every time she looks at Morgan she wants to cry, but she can’t. She has to ignore the burning, the searing, the way her heart screams and her throat bleeds because it’s just _not fair._

 

May gets up. Starts to clear the table. Her hands are steady. Her face is calm. She is the picture of tranquility, moving with an easy grace. Pepper wonders how she can possibly manage that after losing so much, after having pieces of her very soul chipped away, gone forever.

 

It’s automatic when Pepper rises from her seat and goes to help, but May stops her. “That’s okay, Pep,” she says softly. “I’ve got it.”

 

But Pepper doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to learn to rely on others only to have them, inevitably, ripped away. She doesn’t want another ladder kicked out from beneath her feet. She needs to support herself.

 

But May gives her a steady, stubborn look and she backs down. Feels small. Doesn’t know where she fits in, now that there’s a huge gaping hole inside of her, now that she’s only a shell.

 

“Mommy,” Morgan says, and _oh, that’s right._ Pepper sinks back into herself. _You’re where I fit._

 

“Yeah, baby?”

 

“Mommy, where’s Petey?”

 

“He’s upstairs, sweetie,” May says, because Pepper doesn’t know, and immediately she feels guilty for not having asked. Tony would have wanted her to have asked. He’d loved Peter, he’d missed him, he’d been crushed and confused and breaking and breaking and breaking until the day Pepper had told him about Morgan.

 

“What’s he doin’?” Morgan asks, around a piece of watermelon, careless and cute even with the juice dribbling down her chin. Pepper wipes it away, because she has to. If she stops doing those little things she’ll lose the ability to ever start again, and then she’ll stop doing the big things too. Support, stability, constants.

 

“Well, I think he’s showering.” May pokes her cheek. “Why don’t you finish up and then you can go bug him, okay?”

 

“Okay!” Morgan beams. She is starshine and quick laughs and bright eyes, a mind that runs a mile a minute with a mouth to match, reciting the laws of physics because Tony had thought it would be

 

( _fucking hilarious, huh Pep? She’s four and she thinks Ohm’s Law is a bedtime song_ )

 

—“I have to go,” Pepper blurts. “I need to um...”

 

She can’t think of an excuse. May smiles anyway, easily brushing it off, a hand on Happy’s shoulder, a spring breeze through willow branches. “That’s okay, honey. You do what you need to do.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a kid on his bed.

 

She’s staring up at him with wide brown eyes, teeth clamped around the head of that Spider-Man plushie, hugging it like it’s her best friend. Morgan Stark, one person of many that he’s not ready to face.

 

Morgan Stark, who launches herself at him with a gleeful shout of, “ _Petey!_ ”

 

His instincts kick in and he grabs her, holds her, super strength shouldering her weight so that he might as well be clutching a bag of feathers. Morgan is talking, rambling really, hands on his cheeks and cold.

 

“I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to meet you,” she complains, pouting a little. “Daddy said you were gone, and he was always talking about you. Well, not all the time. It made him super duper sad, cuz you were never gonna come back. But you did! You’re my Petey, and you’re here just like I wished for!”

 

His mind is lagging. It takes him a minute to catch up with what she’s saying. “You wished for me?”

 

Morgan nods rapidly, all flushed excitement and hurried words, falling out of her mouth one after the other with no air to space them out, just like him. “On a star! It was in a movie and so I tried it and it worked!”

 

Peter opens his mouth, but there’s no room to reply. She’s already going again, holding up the stuffed toy. “This is you! Daddy got it for me because I was having nightmares and sleepwalking and stuff. He said you’d always protect me because you’re super strong, and he said you would scan the perm-perim-permiter for monsters and eat them before they could eat me. I know you don’t really eat them, Daddy’s silly, but it’s still my favorite toy.”

 

She takes the Spider-Man plushie and presses its face against his cheek, like it’s kissing him.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Morgan asks, because he can’t speak, because she’s stunned him into silence. The words are coming out of her mouth but it’s Tony he hears, Tony in her easy smile and the warmth that comes from somewhere, the warmth that for him should have been long gone, dampened by every loss and betrayal and heartbreak

 

(but here’s this kid, this tiny ball of energy, rapid fire questions, five years of life from a time he ceased to exist, five years of memories, she _wished for him on a star_ )

 

—so Peter smiles. It’s easy. Too easy.

 

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

 

Morgan studies him with an unnatural intelligence, the kind that makes her five year old face look older. She seems to understand something, takes a piece of knowledge from whatever his features reveal, and smiles back. “Hi.”

 

Peter realises then that he could never hate her, or resent her, or ignore her, or do any of those awful things he had been intending to upon first seeing her, rife with the realisation that she’d gotten more time with _him_ than he’d ever had, what an awful thing to think—

 

(he can only love her).

 

“Hi.”

 

Morgan pokes his cheek. “Do you wanna go play in my tent with me?”

 

It’s what she asks, but it’s not what he hears, it’s:

 

_do you want to be my big brother? do you want to look out for me and protect me and eat all the big bad scary monsters and tell me all the things I didn’t know about my dad?_

 

“Yeah, sure. That sounds great, Morgan.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: more Pepper and Peter, Happy & May, and more Peter & Morgan :D

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it, lmk! 
> 
> (there’s more to come, btw: Peter and Morgan bonding, May and Peter catching up, Pepper being Sad and Strong) 
> 
> :D


End file.
